D-notices – UFOs – Crop Circle debunking in an easily deniable form and Nick Pope; strings still being pulled…
One of the more interesting facets of Colin Andrew’s ‘Operation Blackbird’ was the D-notice served to Swindon’s GWR station, preventing a live broadcast from the operation. The broadcaster involved was Dave Barrett, who emailed Colin after the event and stated the validity of his claims. Despite several FOIA attempts by myself the MoD have claimed that no such D-notice was served, or rather they had no documentary evidence of that fact. Using the text of the email, provided by Colin himself, I wrote to Air-Vice Marshal Andrew Vallance, who is the secretary of the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee. The committee is responsible for monitoring the DA Notices within the UK. (They used to be referred to as D-Notices but now re-titled to DA notices.) The committee is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) but the committee try to be as open as possible to avoid claims of cover-up.
In his response to my enquiry of the aforementioned D-notice, Mr Vallance is quite dismissive; “The phrase ‘slap a D-notice on it’ is commonly used by the media with great carelessness and to cover a multitude of circumstances. Claims such as that made by Dave Barrett carry no weight unless they can be supported by some form of documentary evidence”. So the committee denies any D-notice was ever served, or rather, no evidence of it exists. There is a subtle difference. So has Dave Barrett lied? Unlikely, he stands to gain nothing by concocting such a claim. He is not involved in the crop circle phenomena as such, so gains absolutely nothing.
We can look at the definite facts: for some reason the live broadcast from Operation Blackbird was cancelled. Swindon’s GWR dedicated resources to this live broadcast so something significant would need to happen to cancel this live broadcast. What this really points to is that someone, somewhere can use the power of the D-notice to cancel coverage of the crop circle phenomena, and can do it in a way that leaves no paper-trail or subjects anyone to any level of accountability for their actions. Again, the hidden-hand, the inner circle, the nameless ones, who can control situations with impunity, flex their muscle.
What this also highlights is that the MoDs ‘UFO desk’ is just a mickey-mouse public front that does not have any idea of the true scale of the UFO/Crop Circle phenomena. This also highlights the ‘expert’ status of the former MoD staff member Nick Pope. Nick had access to all the files that are currently being released by the MoD, and Nick claims no such D-notice was issued, so he has no knowledge of these inner workings and therefore we have to question why he still seems to publicise the official version of events when others such as Colin Andrews can blow huge holes in the ‘official story’.
When I made a FOIA request to the MoD as to the extent of Nick Pope’s role, the response was that Nick’s general role was to “answer parliamentary enquiries, and correspond with members of the public on matters to do with UFOs,” I believe that Nick’s role was to front this public face of the MoD UFO desk, and broadly knows no-more than what is being released by the MoD anyway. Once all these files are released we will all know what Nick knows or had access to. The media views Nick as some expert and is regularly consulted, but his knowledge on what the MoD knows is very limited, so thus the information he provides the media with still toes the MoD line, he continues to do what he did for the MoD. And he generally plays down the MoD involvement with UFOs and Crop Circles. I have always been doubtful of ‘game-keepers turned poachers’, and I consider the media’s continual courting of Nick rather than other researchers part of the conspiracy of silence. The files being released are an attempt to fool the public, but as I have written and lectured on previously, the evidence of an inner-circle manipulating anything to do with UFOs and Crop Circles within the MoD is over whelming.
The D-notice issue is not over yet, nobody is that good at continually covering their tracks, and I will shortly show, through ‘their’ mistake, that the D-notice was indeed issued. Stay tuned…
July 7, 2009 at 9:32 pm
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Interesting that you can even ask a question that broad when doing a FOI request.
Our D-Notices seem to be infamous all over the world – it’s an overt example of media control when so many less direct ways are probably used instead.
My view has always been that if we can pin down just what role Nick Pope had at the MoD UFO Desk – ie: who he answered to, what priority his tasks were given, what access he had to certain areas, who and/or what he could use at his disposal etc – then we’ll find a fair bit about the overall importance of this issue within government circles.
Although Nick is fairly open about things – there’s little to go on with answering the above though.
July 18, 2009 at 11:38 am
I find its good to start with a broad question and then get more specific based on the response. I think you are correct in that understanding the structure is the key, Nick may be open about certain things but I feel there is a lot of counter-information on the guy that still raises doubts. But to counter that I have found him a genuinely nice guy to speak to and very informative, we must avoid demonising him too much.
The trouble is that D-Notices (DA-Notices) are still frequently used and as I am currently discovering, they seem to be applied with little accountability.